


Falling in Love With a Name

by TheQueen



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter/Funhaus RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Drabble, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, No Dialogue, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-11
Updated: 2015-11-11
Packaged: 2018-05-01 02:37:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5188961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheQueen/pseuds/TheQueen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Michael falls in love with a name, not a man. Gavin swears to just never fall in love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Falling in Love With a Name

Michael falls in love, not with a man, but with a name. Gavin. Gavin. Gavin. Carved above his left hip since his tenth birthday. When he dares to run fingers along each letter, it feels like a raised scar. And yet, to him, it might as well have been made of crystal: fragile and precious. A beacon of light. 

Gavin does not fall in love. Gavin swears to never ever fall in love. Michael, he thinks, like a wound along his wrist, sliced and scared without his say. Michael. Michael. Michael. Gavin scowls, wraps wristbands and bandages and long sleeves to hide the horror as he thinks about his parents and his neighbors. Of screams and of guilt. Of staying together despite everything that says otherwise because of the names carved into your skin. Never, he swears, never in a million years.

Michael turns 18, moves away from home, goes to trade school to learn a craft to get by and spends his free time playing games and searching for a boy named Gavin to fall in love with.

Gavin finishes his A-levels, starts his career shadowing a cameraman, and spends his vacations in America, falling in love with his dream job, falling in love with the people who work there. He doesn't think about Michael (and if he tends to scratch at the wristband around his left wrist, he'll swear it doesn't mean anything). 

Time passes as time does, and Michael’s attention moves from Gavin to work and to friends as he finds a normalcy, a routine. He starts an online identity thanks to the pushing of his friends and his growing love for a company named Rooster Teeth only to get noticed by an inspiration. It doesn't take long after to be offered a job, that he partially turns down because of worry over acceptance. Until he makes friends with a boy who he could have loved if his name was Gavin instead of Ray.

Gavin feels trapped, lost. In his country and in his body. Watches time slip by in limbo, waiting for a visa that feels impossible to obtain the longer he goes without. And he falls. Into depression and into isolating. Goes out only for work and for Dan. But sends the rest of the time in his room, dreaming of a future he might never have. And for the first time, his allows his mind slips to Michael. Michael. Michael. Michael. And he takes the wristband off, traces the letters with a reverence he’s never felt before. And he learns to long.

Michael takes a chance, moves across the country and hopes it’s the right thing to do at the egging on of a dear friend turned lover. Gavin comforts him: the name but also the idea of him. Home and love and comfort. Ray calls him a romantic, unconcerned with the name Michael had discovered on his inner thigh. And as his life settles into place at work and in his personal life, Michael is glad he hasn’t met Gavin yet. He had been too young, too dependent. Too in love with the idea of a soul mate to understand what it is like to love a person. And for all the things he has learnt from Ray, from being with Ray, perhaps that is the greatest lesson. How to love a person instead of a name. And now. Maybe soon. He is ready. He will be ready to meet Gavin.

Gavin makes a video with a giant balloon and it’s like magic. Attention from media outlets, online award shows, and large sums of money come his way. And suddenly everything—the visa, Rooster Teeth, Michael—feels possible again. Burnie congratulates him, hires a new lawyer, and promises good results. The day the visa application is submitted, he goes him and tries not to cry from joy, but also from hope. Soon. That is all he can think of. Soon. Soon. Soon. Soon he’ll be in America. Soon he’ll finally be working, officially, for Rooster Teeth. Soon he’ll meet Michael. And he’s glad he hadn’t met Michael before: hadn't been given the chance only to throw it away because he hadn't understand. But now. But now, he is ready. When he meets Michael, he will be ready.

The day they meet, they fall out of love with a name and a concept and fall in love with a man. Burnie introduces them, will remind them of that for days and weeks and years to come. Geoff groans about newly weds, but really he will congratulate them, be happy for them, and then tell them to get to work. Jack cheers for them, wishes them the best of luck, and thinks of his own soul mate yet to be found. Gavin feels self-conscious, becomes hyperaware of his rumpled clothes and out-of-place accent and lack of college education in the face of the most beautiful person he has ever met. Michael becomes flustered, lost for words and sweaty palmed as his heart starts racing. He hopes he is everything Gavin has ever dreamed of even with his baby face and loud nature. And he promises himself to be everything Gavin has ever wanted because, already, Gavin is more than he could ever dreamed of.

And they’ll—the two of them in love—address all that later (expectations and assumptions and hopes and fears), when they’ve been lucky enough to really know each other: their fears and their insecurities as well as their joys and their triumphs.

But for now.... but for now, they simply introduce themselves.

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to play around with a new style. What do you guys think?
> 
>  **Edit:** So my story deleted itself which is very odd...okay? Whatever. I reposted it.


End file.
